Three things on a Sunday afternoon

[dolorosa_12]

This is one of those posts about unrelated things, none of which I feel really warrants a post of its own.

I stumbled across this excellent post by Ada Palmer on her blog. On the surface of things, it's about the two recent TV series about the Borgias, but what it's really about is being a professional historian (or someone who has deep historical knowledge about specific time periods), and learning to switch off that part of the brain when engaging with historical fiction. I really love the way Palmer writes — I haven't seen either series, but this doesn't matter, as her writing draws you in, no matter what the subject.

I've hit a bit of a reading slump, and it hasn't helped that the book I was reading, The Library of the Unwritten by AJ Hackwith, sounded cool in terms of concept (a librarian who spends the afterlife preserving and collecting all unwritten books, for the library of Hell), but really didn't work for me in terms of execution. It's the sort of book about books, stories, authors and bookishness that I think I would have adored fifteen years ago, but with which I am swiftly losing patience — the literary equivalent of Oscar-baity films about Hollywood. (Other recent examples of this subgenre of fantasy novel which I also found tooth-gratingly irritating include The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E Harrow, and The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (both of which were, indeed, pushed at me by Goodreads when I marked The Library of the Unwritten as 'read'.) I think it doesn't help that these types of stories have a tendency to be extremely twee — this wasn't as bad in that regard as Harrow's writing, but it was still too treacly for my tastes. I wanted more celestial and infernal politics, and less pontificating about the power of stories.

Talk to me about Yuletide! Who is planning to participate this year? What fandoms are you thinking of nominating? Nominations coordination in the comments is most welcome!

Comments

[dolorosa_12]

Your nominating approach is so interesting, because it's so different to my own. I only nominate things I want to receive, because it's highly unlikely anyone else is going to nominate or request them, and then I rely on others to have nominated things I'm capable of writing. I always participate in Yuletide with the assumption that no one will request any of my nominated fandoms, and I can generally find something I'd be happy to write in the tagset, because a lot of the perennial Yuletide favourites are fandoms that I'm familiar with and can generally think of fic that will fit participants' requests.

Do you find it risky to use nomination slots nominating things you want to write, or are you always confident that at least someone will request them, and have prompts that you can write?

[lyr]

I make two lists, one with what I want to read, and one with whatever I feel most in the mood to write at the time. Then I treat the lists entirely differently. On the requesting list, I only nom the ones that are super rare, because I figure no one else will ask for them. On the writing list, I only nom the ones that I am pretty sure are just popular enough that if they're in the tagset someone will request them. I tend to offer a bunch of other things in the tagset too, mind, but I'm usually in the mood for a certain style of canon to work with, so it helps to have plenty of available options that suit.

[dolorosa_12]

That's a really interesting method — thanks for sharing!